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Holland Festival

The Holland Festival is the Netherlands' leading festival, showcasing the best of what is being made internationally and nationally on the bigger stages.

Meistersinger @HollandFestival convinces musically only

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Cowardly knight defeats untalented rule fetishist with help from wise cobbler and wins singing contest and the hand of coquettish goldsmith's daughter. Or: boy meets girl on the streets of Nuremberg and decides to enter the local version of Nuremberg's got talent. The judges send him away, but he gets the audience vote. Wagner wouldn't be Wagner, however, if he didn't take about five hours for this story.

Deep in the belly of the Icelandic cello @hollandfestival

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It's a tricky genre, which drone, or ambient. Or, what do you call the avant-garde cello experiments of the Icelandic Hildur Guðnadóttir (1982). Very slow, very repetitive, very minimalist. Abstract sound art that leans heavily on loops, resonations and buzzing, über syrupy tones that swell into a large, layered sound collage.

Two voices on Sunken Garden @HollandFestival part 2. Thea Derks: 'Guilt & penance before, after, with and in death'

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Amsterdam, 5-6-2013 - It is difficult to go uninhibited to a production that has already caused so much controversy as Michel van der Aa's Sunken Garden. This 'first 3D opera' was ne...

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Two voices on Sunken Garden @HollandFestival, part 1. Henri Drost: "much more than 3D film opera"

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Forget all the fuss about the first ever 3D film opera, forget all the fuss in British newspapers. Michel van der Aa himself sighed in interview that, on reflection, he would have loved to have made the second 3D film opera. And perhaps he had

Orchestre El Gusto lets sounds of Kashba Blues blow through @hollandfestival like warm desert wind

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They are gentlemen of age and therefore with a history. Grey or bespectacled or bald - or with a combination of all three. Their music has taken them everywhere. And now they are in a packed Carre: the Orchestre El Gusto. To their own delight, as they thank the audience for coming. The musicians from the kasbah of Algiers play the music as it is

Jan Lauwers with musical folk theatre at @hollandfestival: 'It's forbidden to memorise lyrics'

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An explosion in a crowded market square claimed 24 lives, including seven children. When the village commemorates that tragedy a year later, a boy falls out of a window and a girl disappears into a dungeon for 76 days. That leads to a series of acts of violence ...

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A chamber opera blown up to impressive proportions at @hollandfestival

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,,The special thing about Quartett is that an intimate story between two people is blown up to impressive proportions. The characters find themselves in a room, which seems to float. In this seclusion, an isolated game between a man and a woman plays out. Giant video projections

Minicourse Opening @HollandFestival, part 1: Total theatre on slippery communication

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This year's Holland Festival opens with a performance of the opera 'Quartett'. It is a piece with a story, which needs some explanation. Maarten Baanders gives a short course on this performance. Also interesting for those who toev...

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Simon Stone adapts Ibsen for Australians: 'And why would you even go to the theatre if you live in Sydney?'

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Simon Stone (28) wrote a new play based on Henrik Ibsen's 1884 stage classic The Wild Duck. The Swiss-born Australian provided the Norwegian play with entirely contemporary language and dressing. The actors sit

Moritz Eggert: 'I want to give Wagner back his innocence'

With Tragedy of a Friendship, Flanders Opera commemorates the bicentenary of Richard Wagner's birth. It is a production by controversial artist Jan Fabre, author Stefan Hertmans and composer Moritz Eggert. When I approach the German tone poet for a conversation about this opera, he responds with shock: there is ab-so-lutely no opera! Could I please clear up this misunderstanding once and for all?

Why shouldn't Tragedy of a Friendship be a ...

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Culture Press ratings: thick 300,000 minutes of attention

With paper, you never know ('0.3% of newspaper readers read the reviews on the art page'), and with TV it's always a bit of estimating and extrapolating too, but the internet is rock hard. We know how many times you read one of our pieces, and how long you lingered at our videos. Well: we were already proud last year, now we are well over 200,000

Strauss with muscle by Gustavo Dudamel, the sizzling South American. #hf12

The young conductor of Venezuelan descent brought his Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra to the Concertgebouw for the final concert of the Holland Festival last night for the first time. While Hollanders braved the tropical weather in the corridors, Venezuelan beauties walked to the stage vivaciously on their stilettos. After Máxima and Willem-Alexander had also taken their seats on the balcony, Gustavo Dudamel came dancing down the stairs.

Of course the thunderstorm is not too bad. But follow developments here in case it does go wrong. #hf12

For the second time this month, the weather gods are threatening to throw a spanner in the works at the Holland Festival. While the storms announced on 21 June were not too bad, for tonight, 28 June, a 'code red' is currently (10:45) threatened to be issued by the emergency services.
According to the storm chasers on the meteo-service weather forum, things could go badly wrong tonight. Their language is as puzzling to the uninitiated as the texts of Nostradamus or the Mayan calendar, but if they have the ...

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Talk to our reporters. Exclusive: spot in the #hf12 hangout for our most loyal followers

There have been days when we had 1500 page views. You, 2500 of our most loyal visitors, came so far to provide 14000 views on dedodo.co.uk, and you stayed around for an average of three minutes. On average. We are proud of that. Apparently, we managed to attract and keep your attention. So those are good numbers for an online festival day newspaper like The Dodo, which has to make do with no screaming, no marketing budget but an overdose of enthusiasm and professional...

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